3132 research outputs found
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Investigating the possible futures of communities driven by emerging digital technology and affected by community-centred design
Get PDFEmerging digital technology can positively impact humans, but its existence and rapid advancement also causes unintended consequences and externalities – the costs and benefits of the industry’s activity – in society. In particular, emerging digital technology is disrupting healthy communities. With healthy communities as the backbone of a democratic society, the risks of unintended impacts, such as social fragmentation and social polarization, are significant. Therefore, this research explores a definition of healthy community, the evolution of community in the context of technology, and how digital technology can be designed to preserve and build healthy communities now and across various possible futures. Leveraging systems thinking and foresight methodologies, multi-level system community-fortifying interventions are developed, propelling the paradigm shift from human-centred design to community-centred design
Embosom: Exploring the Concept of Home Through a Multi-sensory Virtual Reality Installation
Get PDFThis research delves into the potential of multi-sensory Virtual Reality (VR) installations in exploring the notion of home from the perspective of diaspora. Through Embosom, a VR sculpture installation that blends virtual reality, sound, and touch, a distinctive dual spatial environment is created that enhances the viewer's sensory experience and evokes physical and emotional comfort. This research also explores the relationship between the concepts of "home" and "diaspora," recognizing that they are intertwined. Viewers are enveloped by a soft sculpture that resembles a home, manifested through the form of a hugging sculpture. Simultaneously, wearing a VR headset, they are presented with dreamy motion graphics depicting homes made of sparkling particles, along with various structures such as windows and doors. Embosom offers an experience providing reflection on the concept of home by intersecting the boundaries of the real and virtual worlds and taking viewers on an imaginative journey. As viewers navigate through Embosom, a sound piece plays in the background, adding to the overall experience with its calming and meditative effects. This research draws on principles from the fields of phenomenology and psychology of home that inform the design process. Utilizing research creation and case study approaches, participants' feedback was gathered via an interview questionnaire and a survey, indicating that the installation reduced anxiety and increased calmness. This research underlines the potential that arises when art and technology converge to explore how individuals from a diasporic background perceive and imagine the concept of home within a multi-sensory VR installation
OurOS: A hybrid physical and digital tabletop game as a tool for rural community members to build sustainable communities
Get PDFDevelopmental organizations face challenges in ensuring the sustainability of their interventions in rural communities. Community knowledge and healthy social and political systems are essential in designing effective interventions. In this research, I discuss the issue of limited access to essential technology among women from rural communities and the need to design technology from the end-user's perspective. Over the course of this thesis, I propose OurOS as a tool based on design justice principles that involve stakeholders, including community members, development professionals, and government employees, in co-designing innovative solutions to the wicked problem of sustaining community support. The tool is framed as a tabletop game that is played to facilitate discussions among stakeholders to co-create a plan of action for building a sustainable community. By constructing a collaborative approach that involves all community members, I argue that developmental organizations can create interventions that have a lasting impact on rural communities
The White Fraud: White Elephants, Siam, and Comparative Racialization
Get PDFIn this paper I examine P. T. Barnum's attempt to bring the first “sacred white elephant” to America, and his subsequent “white elephant war” with rival showman Adam Forepaugh, through the lens of Afro-Asian comparative racialization. I look at several accounts of white elephants that describe their skin color in terms of the US's Black/white race dichotomy and ask why this animal was a popular figure for examining the US's shifting attitude toward race and transpacific imperialism in the late nineteenth century. By reading the “white elephant war” through a comparative framework, I argue that the heterogeneous histories of both African American and Asian racialization inhered and intersected in this specific instance of racial comparison, while tracking the overlaps and oversights that this analysis reveals
Making the North, Together: Envisioning makerspaces as systems conveners in the social economy
Get PDFThis major research project (MRP) applies systems and foresight tools to the realm of makerspaces and their social impact – it seeks to understand the role of a makerspace in convening community and facilitating self-organization from the grassroots level. It asks how the democratization of making, and of the tools and technologies involved, plays a role fostering the inherent creativity and niche innovations of a community. Hypothesizing that makerspaces, have the potential to reach across different spectrums of socio-economic class and identity, how might they act as leaders within a system, engines for convening grassroots power? Where social systems have become entrenched, in what ways might makerspaces exert pressure on existing regimes? These questions are applied in an action case following a participatory action research methodology, sponsored by a not-for-profit maker-space in Yellowknife, Canada, called MakerspaceYK (MSYK). Following the acquisition of a new space and resources, the sponsor sought a generative re-framing of its strategic purpose,
especially in relation to the systemic issues faced by the community it serves. The organization’s perspective on its role within the wider system was explored strategic foresight tools, and interviews were conducted with other local non-profit and social impact organizations to establish the systemic landscape. The research findings were consolidated and synthesized into a Theory for Systemic Change and Action, with the aim of understanding potential impact and latent systemic leverage.
Ultimately, the study finds that makerspaces espouse the unique quality of being able to scale to purpose, reaching across the system as an intermediary, coordinator, and resource orchestrator among regime-level, niche-level, and community level actors. Due to this quality, makerspaces are well positioned to become systems conveners – fostering dialogue, spaces for learning, and cooperation across social boundaries
In Tok We Trust – Exploring Social Media’s Role in the Worlds of Retail Investors and Institutions
Get PDFThe dual trends of retail investing and social media’s role as a channel for investing advice are on the rise. The objective of this study is to determine the forces that shape retail investors’ trust (or lack thereof) in financial institutions, and conversely the forces that shape trust in social media platforms and content creators as alternative sources of financial and investing advice. Understanding retail investors’ behaviours and perceptions toward these sources of investing advice sets the foundation for retail investors to be more informed and equipped with areas of further exploration in the current and future investing landscapes.
This study approaches the research objective through a combination of primary research with retail investors who leverage social media as a source of advice, a supplementary literature review to explore emerging themes and perceptions further, and a foresight exercise which illustrates alternative futures and alternative ways in which key signals of change evolve.
Following the analysis of findings for each methodology and subsequent synthesis, this study identifies that financial institutions face less of a crisis of trust, but more so one of faith in favourable outcomes. Institutions must grapple with (particularly younger) retail investors’ lack of faith that the perceived-general level of advice, combined with the cost of services, will facilitate their wealth goals. Social media platforms are not seen as necessarily more trustworthy, but more capable of delivering timely, targeted advice to retail investors. Signals of change in the financial industry and marketplaces point toward hyper-personalized investing services, aggressive increases in personal financial data sharing and segmentation to deliver services, and a pronounced emphasis on ESG-forward investing options. In futures where ESG-related advice is orchestrated and better standardized, social media-delivered advice stands at risk of obsolescence in the face of more empowered and surgical retail investors
